Yes, Obama’s president—and you’re not
Obama won, as he keeps reminding us.
Today in his press conference, he said:
“I think John McCain has genuine passion about many of these international issues,” Obama said, adding that they share a desire to see free speech respected. “But only I’m the president of the United States.
I cannot in my lifetime recall a previous president feeling the need to remind the opposition and the public that “I won,” and “Only I’m the president of the United States.” The latter in particular has a “nah nah nah na nah” teasy juvenile quality, especially since Obama is comparing himself to John McCain, the man who ran against him in 2008 and would have liked to have been president instead.
It reminds me of this:
President Barack Obama is economically illiterate and we are not.
He won.
We lost.
He doesn’t seem to quite believe that he’s President. I’m with him on that one. President in name only, perhaps, but President nonetheless.
I keep thinking of Obama as Governor LePetomaine in Blazing Saddles, but am still trying to figure out who is Hedley Lamarr.
Obama’s statement allows Obama to evade addressing the issues raised by John McCain. The statement puts the focus on John McCain for either
1) having the chutzpah to disagree or
2) failing to recognize that Barack must make the difficult decisions.
Both 1 and 2 are ridiculous assertions. McCain is playing his proper role when he criticizes; McCain understands chain of command better than Barack.
Media are oddly (maybe not so oddly) thrown off track by Obama’s banal observations and implicit assertions of wrongheaded thinking on the part of McCain, or on the part of some other critic of the administration. Media develop instant amnesia: Whatever was the substance of McCain’s criticism? What, McCain had something to say? He was probably just trying to distract from the real issues.
Unstatesmanlike is the word that comes to my mind, also displays the same lack of basic leadership I have posted about on here before.
His continued bashing of Fox news is another related item, if this behavior keeps up, soon we will have a pretty accurate map of his inner person.
soon we will have a pretty accurate map of his inner person.
Soon? We had that map in April, 2008.
Boy are we in trouble…
the more time goes the more parallels are shocking…
I will pass on something that odetta said (privately). i will tell from memory. someone asked her how she felt being someone that did all this and meant all that (i dont remember her words, but you get the gist). odetta laughed and said that if she was expecting to feel different to know she arrived it would never happen. you never feel different, just people treat you nicer, want to give you money, and invite you to everything. (something to that affect).
Power cant be felt unless its exercised negatively. that is a person who knows and is confident that they have power does not have to exercise it to know.
however if one expects to feel different when they get to a certain point, they wont, they will always be them. if they didnt like themselves before, they wont like themselves more then. if they expect to feel different they may attempt to use power, as he did, to feel it.
and sociopaths have a need to feel such power. and to them power is the ability to make others do what you want and they are helpless or unable to do anything but comply.
you can see that he sees anything that equals the ability to step outside that situation that he thinks he has someone in fires off major buttons. you can go down the list as to anyone that was uncooperative or fell out of grace, they were made examples to lessen the chances that the next one would stand up or walk away.
he has a power fantasy, and the power one has in a state where one is the servent of the people will not match that fantasy. joe the plumber, the IGs, and others show that a free people are a people who will not stand and be whipped quietly.
its going to be a rough ride…
OB: Who is Hedley Lamarr? Compare:
http://www.obama-biography.org/shared/images/david-axelrod.jpg
http://bleacherreport.com/images_root/user_pictures/0002/4946/hedley_lamarr-705340_profile_page.jpg
Just like George Bush was President, and no Democrat in Congress interfered in foreign policy.
Uncanny resemblance, zhombre. One look at Axelrod and I feel the urge to hold onto my wallet.
Still, Axelrod is small beer, and I’m sure just transmitting orders. Who’s giving them?
zhombre LOL
Occam’s Beard — I’m so glad I’m not the only one who gets the chills from Axelrod. Just his LOOKS are so creepy — oily and greasy, sneaky… And when he opens his mouth, it’s a cue to push the “Do not believe a word you hear” button. Ever calculating, furtive, and even mocking of any of his audience (and the President’s) that believe a word they say!
neo- You have the psychological background. Do you think Obama’s arrogance, the need to keep reminding people publicly that “only he is President,” and that “he won,” are signs of actual self-doubt, low self-esteem. When thinking about how he grew up, it’s seems to make perfect sense to me. Many times when he delivers a joke well, he’ll pause, and then laugh nervously, as if he can’t believe “I did it! They think I’m funny!” It really gets on my nerves. And then there is the completely different speaker, when he speaks extemporaneously vs. reading from the teleprompter. He is quite the opposite of the assured, confident speaker making a prepared speech. Certainly one must take into account the fear of making a slip when he is scrutinized as he is (actually, he is NOT scrutinized as he should be by the MSM but that’s another topic), but his proclivity to lapse into the er….ahhhh….ummm delivery is unlike nearly all other politicians (best example: his own V.P.) who speak surely and confidently, whether they are lying through their teeth, or have no clue as to that which they are talking about. As much as I dislike him, his agenda, and the manner in which he attempts to accomplish his ends, I get the feeling that there is someone inside who can’t quite believe he is the “only President.”
Absolutely NOTHING that BarryO has done or said since coming into office has surprised me. Those of us who did our homework about who he is in late 2007 and early 2008 have been prepared for this.
Between this kind of insecure sniveling, and Barbara Boxer’s rude posturing towards that general, I think we are witnessing the meltdown of the Democrats. They don’t know it, and they think that they are thumping their chests, but it is slipping away from them very quickly. Foreign policy and economic policy are both going to shit.
csimon, I learned long ago not to discount subliminal visceral reactions. Quite the contrary – whenever as a youth I overruled my instinctive reaction (“I have no objective basis for qualms”), I came to regret it. So when I get a strong vibe off of someone, that’s good enough for me. It’s time to rein in the hyper-rationalism and go with the gut!
Every time I hear Obama say something like “I won” or “I’m the president and you’re not” it comes across as a basic lack of intellectual confidence.
Ever notice that this kind of thing seems to happen, a lot, when he is off the teleprompter? It’s almost like an attempt to prove how powerful he is, but actually has the opposite effect.
I think it’s interesting that even the mainstream press, while they are still firmly in his corner, are starting to report on the growing gap between his personal approval ratings (which remain high) and public opinion about his policies and programs, now sinking like a stone. Heck, I even heard some discussion about this on MSNBC.
I still think he’s done enough damage already that in many ways we won’t fully recover. But as Karl Rove said, some of the economic policies Obama has forced through can be mitigated or even reversed. If he has his way with health care, however, there’s really no turning back.
I’m a center right independent (but still a registered Democrat). I’m thinking about voting a straight Republican ticket in the next couple of elections just to do my miniscule part to restore some checks and balances to the system. It’s not much, but it’s something.
I want to see resolution for a U.N. supervised re-election in Iran.
CV,
I had been a lifetime Democrat, until 2002 when I switched parties. I ask this question respectfully: what keeps you in their fold, at least formally? I found that there was virtually nothing keeping me there, Joe Lieberman notwithstanding.
I too am center-right. I’m not a full conservative, but am closer to them than I am to the other side. More and more I come down on the side of smaller government and getting back more to the spirit of the founders in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
FredHjr,
As someone once said, I didn’t leave my party, my party left me! 🙂 One reason I’m still a registered Dem is because I can’t vote in the primary in PA unless I have a major party affliliation.
I live in the heart of the Pennsylvania Rust Belt and come from a long line of bus drivers, coal miners, electrical plant workers etc. Republicans in my family are few and far between. In college and grad school I was fairly liberal (albeit also fairly ill- informed) and as I got older (and presumably more mature) I became more conservative on the social issues (in PA we used to be known as Casey Deomcrats) Now I’m basically horrified not only by Obama’s stance on social issues but also by what he is doing to hack our economy to death. Smaller government is sounding more and more sensible to me.
So after all that rambling, I guess the short answer to your question is that I guess I remain a Dem because of family history and because in my heart I will never be a Republican. But I’m also too practical to sit out elections or throw my vote away on a third party candidate.
Aren’t you sorry you asked? 🙂
“I’m Chevy Chase, and you’re not”
“Generalissimo Franco is still dead”“And Barry Obama is still a thug”
Some things just don’t change, do they?
A propos of Blazing Saddles, maybe we should send Obama a tailcoat with “PREZ” on the back. Then maybe he could stop reminding everyone.
No, CV, I’m not sorry I asked. Not at all. Your story makes sense to me. My parents are still caught up in the mythology of FDR and see in Obama the reincarnation of FDR. Of course, I learned that FDR’s moves only deepened and prolonged the Depression. But so did Herbert Hoover, his predecessor. Hoover was a statist too.
My parents know I’m a Republican now. At first, I think it annoyed them, but I think they’ve accepted it. Of their six children, five of us have become Republicans. For the most part, I steer clear of politics around my parents. In my wife’s family, her mother is a Republican and her mother’s siblings are Republicans. My wife’s only sibling, her sister, is a Left-wing Democrat, as is her husband. My wife is a conservative like me, but, like me, a moderate one. I avoid discussing politics around my sister-in-law and her husband like the plague. She tries to be civil about it, but her husband is boorish and obnoxious about it. I tire of his snark, so I stay away from it.
I just read on another blog a precis of a talk that Dr. Charles Krauthammer gave in D.C. recently. I guess the good physician (he used to be on the medical faculty at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital) was spellbinding and by all accounts the few Democrats at the event agreed pretty much with everything he had to say. It’s in the open now, what BarryO is up to. He is going for it all, and going to govern from the Hard Left.
All of this is no surprise to me. Those of us who did our homework knew it would be this way.
Krauthammer says the same thing I’ve been saying for months: don’t pay attention to what BarryO says; pay attention to what he DOES.
Please stop criticizing the President for constantly reminding us all that he won.
See, every time he does I think his positive ratings continue downward……
So please, if you love the Republic, let him keep up his asinine ways as long as possible until one day he and the rest of the national democrat party find themselves on the outside looking in!
” I am the President.” ( I am reminded of a high school history teacher who informed us that in a challenging discussion with his 19 year old daughter he had told her, “I am your father.” Her reply: “So what else is new?”)
Many politicians belonged to debate clubs in high school and college. IIRC, Tricky Dick was a first-class debater. This practice in debate helped many politicians to become good off-the-cuff speakers and gave them practice in thinking on their feet, without access to a script. I get the impression that our President didn’t belong to any debate clubs.
I get the impression that much of our President’s off-the-cuff speaking practice was as described in the NYT article on his law school years, where by summing up what others said he gave all sides of an issue the impression that he supported them. Unfortunately, what we need as President is not a moderator, but a leader.
The call to authority, instead of a point-by-point dismissal of what McCain said, shows what has long been obvious. Not that good at thinking on his feet.
Oddly enough in a society where the surveys and polls have shown that young people’s prime motivation is fame (more than sex or money) it isn’t too surprising that they do not react negatively to someone saying “I am the supreme high commander”.
The only kind of enemy that Obama is capable of waging war against are us capitalist pig dog conservatives. Otherwise, he’s a pussy. And with his internal enemies, even there he uses proxies to do the dirty work.
This is a guy who does not like to get his hands dirty. He is not a leader in any way that I can discern. Which is why I think he will be even more unpopular with the military than he was during the election campaign.
If you were a foreign enemy you would think that manna from heaven just dropped into your lap, complete with honey coating.
CV: Maybe you’re a Zell Miller Democrat (see this).
Re CV: many of us were once liberal Democrats. The change of party affiliation is often a gradual one. I last voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate in 1976, switched to third party ,but did not vote for a Republican until Bush in 1988, and kept voting third party until 2004.
My perception is that the Democratic Party left me more than I left the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party of today is NOT the party of JFK and Truman.
Politics is compromise. I decided that while I am an agnostic, that the Bible-thumpers who were Republicans scared me a lot less than the politically-correct-Kumbayah-you-are-a-racist-yahoo-if-you-disagree-with-me people populating the Democratic Party.
As someone once said, I didn’t leave my party, my party left me!
CV, my dad was a Reagan democrat. Carter did it for him. I was a little kid, but I still remember him coming home and saying: “I can’t believe it, I just voted a straight Republican ticket!”
Actually, come to think of it, Carter turning off the National Christmas Tree after 5 minutes “to save energy” did it. He yelled: “This is America! We have Christmas! I don’t want a president creeping around the Whitehouse in a sweater being lectured by dictators!”
By 1988, He said: “There’s this Rush Limbaugh guy on the radio who says all the stuff no one else will say.”
He died of a heartattack in ’92 while I was stationed in Korea. He was a Korea-era vet and was beside himself that I was sent to “fight his war”.
I miss him terribly, but I’m kinda glad he didn’t have to live to see what is happening now.
CV:
Would you mind going into why you could never see yourself registering repub?
Not trying to pick a fight or any such. Just wondering. All too often, when statements like that are made, the underlying reasoning is based nearly exclusively on rather weak and senseless propaganda consumed over a lifetime. I am wondering if you’ve ever really sat down and self inventoried your opinions and traced em back to root source and attempted to stand em up against reality.
Btw, I say that as a former repub that is thoroughly unhappy with the sniveling, knee crawling defeat seekers that the GOP has become.
Independent now.
American Thinker has a fascinating comment on Obambi and Iran titled ‘The little President who is not there’ which says it all really. He had his ‘3 am test’ and the BOGUS POTUS, LIAR Messiah. Mohammedan, Laughing Jackass, Teleprompter Kid O-BOW-ma failed ignominiously.
“I won”.
Yeah, one in a row, pal.
One has to love what’s going on in NY right now. That is, unless you happen to live there.
If the governor has the power, he should fire them all and bring on a new election, with none of those currently in office eligible for re-election. None of them.
Reminds me of an English king, Edward IV, if I’m not mistaken, who kept reminding everyone that he was “legitimate”. Except that his “father” had been away from his mother for 11 months or so at the time of his birth. Even in the Middle Ages, they knew something wasn’t right. Seems he, and Barry, doth protest too much.
waltj, are you a secret Ricardian?
Mr. Obama’s skin is very thin. Mr. McCain is what we could have had instead. It is perhaps not surprising that Mr. Obama would be concerned about the risk of being shown up on foreign policy. Conclusion, Republicans need to press McCain into service as a regular spokesman on foreign policy.
Obama Won !
America Lost!!
Something that I find interesting is how Obama and his disciples continuously go on about him winning, as if he defeated the evil George Bush in the last election.
Bush wasn’t running however.
So yes, Obama won, but he didn’t do so by defeating Bush.
His election cannot be said to be a rejection of Bush and his policies so much as it was a rejection of McCain and an acceptance of Obama.
Yes, there was Bush fatigue and I’m not saying it didn’t play a huge role – but again, Bush wasn’t running, and McCain was a disaster as a candidate.
Can you imagine a debate between Cheney and Biden, for instance? Cheney would have eaten him alive!
Same goes for a Bush / Obama debate.
They just weren’t in the running, and the candidate who was running attempted to placate the left at every opportunity.
Regarding McCain himself, he should consider retirement.
His arrogance in the last election cycle led to the current predicament the republicans find themselves in.
He knowingly obtained the nomination by courting democrats and independents to vote in the republican primary – then got his a$$ handed to him by these same types in the general election.
He watered down the republican effort.
As for ideas I’ve seen floating around that we could only get Reagan after having suffered through Carter, keep in mind that had it been McCain instead of Reagan at the helm during the 1980’s we would have had a vastly different society now – and probably not in a positive way.
I’m not saying McCain is a bad person – but he is no Reagan, and counting on a Reaganesque figure to emerge as a result of 4 years of Obama is wishful thinking.
We already are dealing with a party that has their own messiah, we don’t need the right going down that same road.
McCain defeated himself.
McCain also refused to define Obama. Since the media wouldn’t Obama had no negatives. He attracted the youth with no specifics of a plan. Only hope and change with no specifics.
Now we know the specifics and according to Rasmussen Independents disapprove of Obama now. Their biggest complaint? Self described independents didn’t know Obama would be this liberal.
Conservatives didn’t either. But the few specifics Obama did mention were extremely liberal….
This is perfect:
http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english320/Thurber-The_Owl_Who_Was_God.htm
Saw a great bumper sticker: “Don’t blame me – I voted for the American.”
Re Obama’s “I’m the President, and you’re not,” I once was interviewed at a major consultancy to run part of their practice. The CEO (son of the putatively-retired founder) started off (for some reason) by making clear at considerable length that he was a Streisand Democrat who loved all humanity and was filled with compassion for the downtrodden.
Then he seamlessly segued into a rant about how he was the big cheese, the head tuna, the Man, that when he said jump, everyone in the firm said, “How high, sir?” and that I would never be CEO unless I bought him out, and until then he called all the shots and gave all the orders.
Since so far my entire contribution to the conversation had been, “Yes, please, cream and sugar,” I watched this performance with equal parts of astonishment, alarm, and amusement.
It turned out, of course, the dear old Dad still made all the important decisions, but let junior sit in a car seat with a steering wheel and make vrooming noises, hence junior’s insecurity. (Needless to say, I pulled my coat over my head and ran for the door.)
Obama’s repeated NBA-style references to his victory – unprecedented among Presidents of my lifetime – always puts me in mind of that guy.
“…are you a secret Ricardian?”
No, no dynastic intrigue for me. The closest any of my ancestors ever came to England until they passed by in the ship headed to America was about 900 miles to the east, so I can’t say we ever had a stake in that War of the Roses thing. I am a history buff, though.
its a bit off topic, but i was over at popsci… they have this new article…
The Future of Energy: A Realist’s Roadmap to 2050
http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-06/future-energy-realist-roadmap-2050
with obama pushing this, its kind of related in that we are being served up a big crap sandwhich as a realists view.
you want to see a REALISTS view from the people who are propagandizing for the current administration? then peer into this collection of articles and do some basic math… i mean really basic math…
Solar Power: Harnessing the terrawatts of energy we get from the sun
http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2009-06/solar-power
remember this is what passes for science and policy today.
its a short article big on claims and full of concentrated dissonance.
the first thing they do is use saul alinsky method to put you down if you think that solar is not enough…
A shortage of low-carbon power sources seems absurd when you consider that a nearby star bathes the planet in 85,000 terawatts of energy every year. We just have to capture it.
see. your absurd if you think that there isnt enouhg energy. but putting things in these terms is useless. how many square miles are irradiated so that you know how much energy per sqare foot is potentially available? they dont say..
remember this is a realists view in what we must do to completely rebuild the global energy economy by 2050… would a realist say that?
[reminds me of the archetectural ideas of stalin and the building that was started but could never be completed]
ok… but only 29 % of the earth is covered by land
so that number just dropped unless you want to build on the ocean. then how much of that is accessible?
it shows that these guys are ABYSSMAL with even basic numbers.
on one hand they say there is not enough land for all the people to live on, and in another breath they then say we can do this kind of solar thing…
ouch… my head hurts.
they then set a target…
Where We Are: 12.4 GW
What We Need by 2050: 2,000 GW
nice… increase the current state of the industry by 161 times.. in 40 years..
any wonder why central planning by elites never works?
ok.. so they talk about googles eSolar plant which has devised a relatively cheap form of solar power.
in which proponents say can make it cost competitive with caol within a decade
aint no way… and here you will see why by the numbers in their own article..
the first eSolar power plant, a five-megawatt facility called Sierra situated northeast of Los Angeles, 24,000 mirrors gather the sunlight falling on 20 acres of land
to make a five megawatt facility
it takes 24,000 mirrors
it takes 20 acres
and it takes water in the desert…
si they decide to meet a doubling of current usage. that is take us from 12.4 to 24.8 gw… which is way below their 2000 gw target…
they would have to build 2,480 facilities.
they would need 49,000 acres
and would have to produce 59.5 million mirrors *(about the size of a projection tv).
thats a REALISTS view of solar..
but they want to take this tech to 2000 gw… (2 tw)
that would mean 396,800 facilities…
it would take 7,840,000 square acres, or 12,250 square miles covered with mirrors!!!!
it would require 9.5 BILLION mirros to be produced (say 10 billion so they can repair them).
that means we would have to make 238,080,000 mirrors PER YEAR to have enough.
and thats a REALISTS view!!!
[edited for length by neo-neocon]
Art, stop confusing the issue with facts. Don’t you know that the Obamessiah will usher in the age of free, green energy, and all his little minions just know that they’ll be able to power the next-gen Priuses (Prii?) with unicorn flatulence. So stop being the turd in the punchbowl, m’kay? /sarc
Art, forget it.
Anyone who has the slightest grasp of technical matters doesn’t need to be convinced that the argument is nonsense.
Conversely, anyone who is convinced that the argument is sound (or even worth considering) doesn’t have the slightest grasp of technical matters.
The intersection of the two groups is the null set.
For my part, I’d have stopped reading on encountering the interesting but irrelevant (and therefore in the present context, moronic) point about the terawatts of energy emitted by the sun.
Now if we could just get every man, woman, and child on earth to jump off of a chair at the same time, we could move the earth closer to the sun, and thereby increase the power density of solar radiation. Then we’re talking practical. /g
A Ricardian would not doubt the legitimacy of Edward IV as Richard III was his younger brother and the legitimacy of the Yorkist line was important to him. I must admit I have never heard that about Edward IV. The doubts were about his son’s legitimacy (that was the elder of the Princes and Edward V) not because daddy was away from mummy (catch him doing that) but because daddy was probably betrothed to someone else before he married Elizabeth Woodville. I think you may have another Edward in mind, waltj.
Well, he did win. So why does McCain insist on still campaigning?
Obama won and you guys are still bitter.
Love it.
Shorter Matt: nah-nah-nah-na-nah.
Matt:
Was that your response when Gore opened his mouth after 2000, and when Kerry opened his mouth after 2004?
1. Thanks Neo for the edit on Art’s contribution.
2. Art, nice, but we know how terrible they are with math and accountability. I read no mention of hailstorms.
3. Occam’s Beard, the chair jumping would be more provocative if certain politicians and rope were thrown into the mix.
Matt,
Ever hear of a Pyrrhic victory?
Sure, Obama won last year, but it looks more and more like the dems are extremely nervous about the mid term elections coming up next year.
With a complete lock on 2 of the 3 branches of government, they sure as hell can’t accuse the republicans of blocking their agenda, and the economy is worse under them than it ever was under Bush.
Claims that this is the worst economy since the Great Depression kind of fall flat as well, but we’ll stick to recent history.
Just compare Obama’s first 6 months in office with Bush’s first year.
Bush had a recession he had inherited.
Obama has a recession he had inherited.
Bush had an burst economic bubble to contend with.
Obama has a burst economic bubble to contend with.
Bush had a terrorist attack to deal with that left some 3,000 people dead.
Obama has inherited a budding victory over AQ that has left them hiding under rocks in the mountains of Pakistan, unable to really move without having their a$$ shot off, and TWO new democracies in the middle of a part of the world they said couldn’t handle democracy.
Nope, Bush had it much harder than Obama and navigated through those issues successfully.
Obama has had a worst economy in his first 6 months than Bush ever had during his worst economic period at any point in 8 years!
Don’t believe it? Just check out the DJIA at this link. That downward spike at the end is under Obama’s administration – not Bush’s.
http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI
(rubs hands together in glee anticipating the next election cycle)
Edward III — Edward II was… uh… the subject of a Marlowe play…
McCain campaigning??
HA HA HA HA
McCain never started campaigning. The sum entirety of his campaign was a few people like Hannity, right of center blogs, etc.
McCain expressed an opinion.
Obama responded to a question with a na-na-na-na statement.
1/19/09: Treason is the highest form of patriotism.
1/21/09: Criticizing government policy is divisive.
right now my biggest worry is that one evening when things get slow… my wife and i will notice some bacwards white lettering emerging from the floor… we look at each other… and we figure out we have been in a movie the whole time and our lives are over as these are the credits…
ack
“Obama won and you guys are still bitter.”
Yep. Guess that makes him “the decider” now. We’ll just take the example of the left from 2001-2009 as a proper code of conduct.
Okay with you, Matt?
“I think you may have another Edward in mind…”
I may. I was going from memory, and as it was getting late over here on my side of the world, I didn’t feel like checking. I will tonight. But I do remember it was one of the Edwards who kept sticking in phrases like “…blah blah blah, the King and legitimate son blah blah blah…” in official records of the time. If there were no doubts, such phrases would have been superfluous.
Methinks the O-man harbors similar uncertainties about his political legitimacy. As if he needs to keep reminding himself about who the boss is.
Totally OT…
waltj meant Edward IV, and there is contemporary evidence to support the story that his father was a captain of archers in Rouen by the name of Bleybourgne. The BBC (or maybe ITV) had a program about it 5 or 6 years ago. It traced the surviving Plantagenet heirs to a small town in the Australian outback. These were the descendents of George, Duke of Clarence, who was drown’d in a butt of Malmesy.
If Edward was illegitimate, that had no impact on Richard’s claims. The Ricardians would argue that the illegitimacy of Edward and his surviving sons –the Princes in the Tower–diminishes Richard’s motive to do them in. A hard core Ricardian would argue that in fact the Princes never died in the Tower.
Fascinating stuff…Josephine Tey thought the the story of Richard III was a prime example of how a lie repeated often enough becomes accepted as the truth.
Sorry for the interruption.
Scottie
The economy Bush inherited was actually pretty good coming off of the Clinton’s years. The economy now is bad but not because of Obama. In fact it is not because of any one political party at this point. It’s been a long time coming and there is plenty of blame to go around. But I would blame other factors before politicians.
Anyway if you think the Republicans can gain ground in 2010 or 2012 you need some leaders and a positive image. Have you seen the Republican approval numbers lately? Pretty pathetic.
neo-neocon
I’m not sure why you don’t accept Obama as president or get bent out of shape when he mentions it. Pretty small potatoes – don’t you think?
But too you are including only a part of the text:
“I think John McCain has genuine passion about many of these international issues, and I think that all of us share a belief that we want justice to prevail. But only I’m the President of the United States, and I’ve got responsibilities in making certain that we are continually advancing our national security interests and that we are not used as a tool to be exploited by other countries.”
Anyone who reads this will note that the emphasis is on ‘advancing our national interest.’ Which is rather important – right? I know you hate Obama but come on…let’s not yank things out of context to advance your political causes.
Matt writes:
I’m not sure why you don’t accept Obama as president or get bent out of shape when he mentions it. Pretty small potatoes – don’t you think?
Matt, where did you read in any of neo’s posts that she doesn’t accept Obama as president? That’s a serious charge – you need to cite it, if you can.
The answer is that you can’t. The citation doesn’t exist, because neo never said anything of the kind. Your post is yet another example of sloppy argumentation and rhetorical base-stealing in order to advance a proposition that has no basis in fact.
We accept Obama as our president. We also expect the American president to have more self-assurance , and not to need to keep yammering about how he won, or he’s the only president, etc. It sounds desperate and insecure and lame. Not what we need from our president during these dire times.
I for one don’t hate Obama. But I sure am disappointed in him. American deserves better than a Chicago-rules hack with no executive experience, no knowledge of history or culture, a mysterious academic record, and a tendency to bleat about being the only president. As if we’ve ever had more than one.
Matt, I and others want to know why cannot President Obama give a point-by-point refutation of McCain’s statement instead of reverting to the call to authority, “I am the President.”
Or for that matter, why his press secretary cannot do so.
That is the issue. Perhaps it is because President Obama has not shown himself to speak well in unscripted situations. I and others suspect that is the reason why President Obama has reverted so often to saying “I am the President.” Shuts people up, and you don’t have to explain yourself.
Boy, the stock market plunged in December 2000 as the dot.com bubble burst, and then 9/11 hit. But thanks for the revisionist history.
Occam,
Thanks for the rebuttal to Matt – you were far more succinct than I tend to be.
Matt,
Let me lay out for you why Obonga’s constant reminders are so annoying in a way that even you can understand.
Obonga’s constant reminders of his presidency status are very similar to:
– the constant hints some wealthy types drop while trying to make sure everyone knows they’re wealthy.
OR
– the constant reminders the nerdy office manager makes so everyone knows he’s in charge.
Both tend to alienate their audience – which is what Obonga is doing…
But please, by all means let him keep it up.
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The way he complains about what he’s “inherited” you’d think he’d been dragged into the oval office kicking and screaming.